A record of my ongoing attempt to paint the vast mountain of 1980's lead critters that I've accumulated!

Sunday, 30 November 2014

Citadel Scorpion, Grenadier Nightgaunt and Ral Partha Wyvern

Although I’ve been painting, the autumn weather has meant
that I haven’t been able to varnish the figures… until today. So here are three
figures I’ve been working on since my last post!

The scorpion is from the Citadel Fiend Factory range - FF50
Giant Scorpion. Now, I have to be honest and say that the base paint job isn’t
mine – I got this figure with a fairly decent paint job from an
auction site, and decided to see if I could spruce it up. A simple wash of Army
Painter Dark tone really brought out the detail, as did a rebase on a suitably sandy
base. Simples! It is amazing the difference a quick wash does – the old Citadel
sculpts have an amazing amount of detail. This will do very nicely as the
guardian of treasure for any desert based scenarios.

The central figure is a Nightgaunt from the Grenadier Call
of Cthulhu range. According to Cthulhu: “Nightgaunts have a vaguely human shape, but are thin,
black, and faceless. Their skin is slick and rubbery. They sport a pair of
inward-facing horns on their heads, and have clawed hands and a long barbed
tail which is used to "tickle" their victims into submission. They
can fly using a set of membranous wings.” When this came out of the lead mountain, I was underwhelmed.
The sculpt is definitely on the chunky side – hardly thin! – and the pose wasn’t
especially threatening. Combine that with a desired black coloured scheme, a
lack of detail on the face (in fact no details!) and it could easily have just
turned into a vaguely demonic black lump. With that in mind, I chose to make a
couple of changes – the base colour for the figure was black, but the insides
of the wing were crimson. After that, I decided to use dark purple to highlight
the black of the torso, and that really helped bring out the detail of the
muscles. The base is simply sand, painted gray and then given a dark wash –
oddly enough, the reflection of the light from the figure makes it look light
purple! I deliberately left it with a gloss varnish, which emphasises the
slick, rubbery nature of the skin. It’s an odd sculpt, and whilst I was fairly pleased with the
end result – I honest can’t see this one getting much table top time.

Finally, on the right we have a Ral Partha Wyvern from the Personalities
and Things… range. Ral Partha do some terrific sculpts – fantastic detail – but
if I had a criticism, it is that a lot of their figures look and feel a bit
flimsy in comparison to other manufacturers, especially when you put them
together on the table top. Looking at it next to the Scorpion and the
Nightgaunt, I’m not sure you’d take the Wyvern to win against either of them! I started off with a red base coat, and then various shades
of yellow for the wing feathers. It wasn’t an easy figure to paint, either –
the tail is curled up to form a base, and that wasn’t especially well moulded.
It also caused a lot of pooling on the base when I applied a red and a fair
amount of cursing as I had to mop it out! After that, lots of dry brushing, which really
bought out the detail.

I like the figure a lot, and the paint job came out OK – I
think this may get a decent amount of table top time, purely as a distraction
figure. It might even stand in as a stirge!